NEW YORK — The Yankees started scouting Masahiro Tanaka in 2007, his rookie year in the Japanese Pacific League, when the right-hander was 18 years old. For more than half a decade, they kept tabs on Tanaka, following his progress, knowing that the day might come when the Rakuten Golden Eagles star would come across the Pacific.

The Yankees wanted to be ready for that day, and when that day finally came this winter, they were ready.

Tuesday, Tanaka put on his pinstripes for the first time, and Yankees general manager Brian Cashman revealed how meticulously his team approached the opportunity to bring the pitcher to New York. It started on Christmas Eve, when Rakuten made the official decision to post Tanaka under the new agreement between Major League Baseball and the Japanese leagues. Unlike previous years, when teams would submit sealed offers to Japan and the top bidder would get the rights to talk to a player, the new system puts a cap of $20 million on the posting fee. For Tanaka, several teams were willing to pay that, so he effectively became a free agent.

“When Casey Close (Tanaka’s agent) told all the clubs he was going to bring the player to a neutral territory, so we would have to travel to Los Angeles, with a combine-like physical, any club interested in participating would have a slot,” Cashman said. “I think it was only one or a maximum of two hours. He said, however you want to present your organization, sell your organization, that’s the time to do it. He would be here for two days, then go back to Japan. He did not want to have his winter workouts interrupted. He felt that if he was going start touring the country and looking at different cities, it would affect his preparation for his transition to the United States.”

That businesslike approach impressed Yankees brass.

“We talked a lot about his ability, but also his character traits,” Yankees principal owner Hal Steinbrenner said. “His toughness, how well he gets along with his teammates, things like that. I think the fact that he’s done so much — from huge high school tournaments over there where his team won, he’s been on the big stage over there. Not every Japanese player that’s come over here to play baseball has been on all the big stages, in the big games, as much as him. So, I think that’s something that stands out about him. I’m not worried about him.”

Yankees president Randy Levine compared Tanaka’s poise and character to Hideki Matsui's, but in courting Tanaka there was one key difference. When Matsui came to America after the 2002 season, he only wanted to play for the Yankees. Bringing Tanaka to New York required a sales pitch.

“We had a small period of time, a week or two weeks to prepare, to decide how we should approach that,” Cashman said. “We decided — we probably brought more than anybody else, but we wanted to be in a position that we had our manager there, we had our pitching coach there, our team president was there representing ownership. Trey Hillman was there, a new addition, although Trey Hillman had worked for the Yankees as a minor league manager for years. A dear friend, he had managed the Nippon Ham Fighters to a championship in Japan. He’d worked with the Texas Rangers as their player development director and with the Los Angeles Dodgers as a coach in the major leagues. He worked in Kansas City as a manager. He was there as someone that, if Tanaka-san wanted to ask questions, this is someone that worked in so many places in baseball worldwide, and he loves the Yankees, but he could talk about here or anywhere else you’d choose.”

Hillman’s inclusion in the Yankees’ traveling party was notable not only because of the resume that Cashman detailed, but because Hillman had been fired as the Dodgers’ bench coach after the National League Championship Series in October, and hired by the Yankees as a special assistant for major and minor league operations less than a week before Tanaka was posted. Considering that Los Angeles was viewed as another one of the favorites for Tanaka’s services, Hillman’s role in the Yankees’ recruitment strategy was certainly an interesting one.

Tanaka came from Tokyo to New York for his introduction on a chartered 787, a flight that he didn’t even really get to enjoy the luxury of because he slept. The Yankees could have just about filled another jumbo jet for that trip to Los Angeles, as their party also included team Japanese liaison George Rose and assistant general managers Billy Eppler and Jean Afterman.

“We had an entire array of people positioned to allow Tanaka, if necessary, to really go a number of different routes,” Cashman said. “If we needed to go more baseball only, we had scouting reports. Larry Rothschild (the pitching coach) brought scouting reports that we had translated into Japanese for the American League teams we play, which is what we normally do for Hiroki Kuroda. We showed him that. We had two videos we produce. We basically put ourselves in a position that we brought everything we possibly could, so that if it wasn’t going to be us, we didn’t have any regrets. The one thing we could we could rely on was that the city of New York sells itself, and the Yankee history and tradition sells itself. We’ve been in Japan so much with Matsui, Kuroda and (Ichiro) Suzuki that we could rely on him already having firsthand knowledge of us.”

Tanaka did not come to America with the Yankees as his specific preference, so their presentation — and, of course, their seven-year, $155 million offer — were important. And they worked.

“I looked at the teams equally, then basically made my decision,” Tanaka said through an interpreter. “I wanted to come here and win. I wanted to come here and win championships. The Yankees are a team that’s always in that type of situation. I understand there’s a lot of pressure here to win, but I just wanted to come here, and see how far I can go.”